What’s it like to dedicate your life to work that won’t be completed in your lifetime? Fifteen years ago, filmmaker David Licata focused on four projects and the people behind them in an effort to answer this universal question.
Stunning espionage documentary on the US conspiracy that led to the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson original White House tapes, and CIA Top Secret documents reveal how the US government planned to overthrow Brazilian elected president João Goulart.
The story of how the life-saving cervical cancer test became an ordinary part of women’s lives is as unusual and remarkable as the coalition of people who ultimately made it possible: a Greek immigrant, Dr. George Papanicolau; his intrepid wife, Mary; Japanese-born artist Hashime Murayama; Dr. Helen Dickens, an African American OBGYN in Philadelphia; and an entirely new class of female scientists known as cyto-screeners. But the test was just the beginning. Once the test proved effective, the campaign to make pap smears available to millions of women required nothing short of a total national mobilization. The Cancer Detectives tells the untold story of the first-ever war on cancer and the people who fought tirelessly to save women from what was once the number one cancer killer of women.
Five Years North is the coming-of-age story of Luis, an undocumented Guatemalan boy who just arrived alone in New York City. He struggles to work, study, and evade Judy - the Cuban-American ICE officer patrolling his neighborhood.
Harrod Blank, who took us into the world of art cars with his epic first film, Wild Wheels, now focuses more in-depth on a few select art vehicles, the Grass Bus, the Hamburger Harley, and the Camera Van. As with his previous film, and the following one (Automorphosis) Blank takes a dauntless look at American car culture.
The story of Ishi, who became known as the "last wild Indian" when, at about 50 years of age, he wandered out of the woods in Oroville, Cal., in 1911. He died five years later; and his brain was sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.. Eighty years later, however, his descendants successfully fought to have his remains repatriated to his ancestral home.
Gay Hollywood Dad chronicles the first six months of single gay dad Quentin Lee juggling between raising his newborn baby by himself and making his means as an acclaimed independent filmmaker in Hollywood.
This is the untold story of a remarkable American civil rights pioneer, Father Divine, who at one time had over a million followers worldwide in his Peace Mission Movement. However, things became complicated when he claimed that he was God incarnate.
A heartbreaking, yet redemptive journey into the history of the Amish People. The year 2017 is the five hundred year anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg and starting the Reformation in Germany. This film considers the impact of the Reformation Era on the Amish Church in America today.
This film speaks to the uniquely inherent traits that drummers and percussionists possess as natural explorers of music and sound, and how this particular story explores the challenge of translating foreign voices of percussive expression into the dialect of a Western classical orchestra setting. Five accomplished percussionists, Drum, and a rock star composer, Stewart Copeland, come together with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to create a groundbreaking work.
In Isla Verde, Puerto Rico, a group of environmentalists have occupied Camp Pa'l Pueblo Beaches for over six years to prevent the expansion of a hotel chain from limiting public access to the beach and impacting the region's natural resources.
Ten years after the policy-changing and award-winning film, The Dying Rooms, the same team returns to a very different China where the infamous One Child Policy has had the horrific side effect of a boom in stolen children. With extraordinary access to devastated parents desperately searching for their stolen son; a man who brokers the deals and has sold his own offspring; and prospective parents grappling with giving up their soon-to-be-born daughter through lack of options, we are brought face to face with the crisis that such a stringent government policy has created among China's poorest people.
The Bakhtiari migration is one of the most hazardous tests of human endurance known to mankind. Every year, 500,000 men, women and children — along with one million animals — struggle for eight grueling weeks to scale the massive Zagros Mountains — a range which is as high as the Alps and as broad as Switzerland — to reach their summer pastures.
Dragonflies, beetles and ants, oh my! Take a journey to the miniature world, and get a bug's eye view of all sorts of alien creatures that exist all around us. With humor, suspense, and wonder, you'll never know what to expect around the next corner!
The surprising story of how one of music's biggest icons helped to establish a USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor. Elvis’ fundraising concert drew public attention to the plight and helped to galvanize efforts to finish the USS Arizona Memorial as it stands today.
This documentary film follows the lives of two drag queens Laveau Contraire and Franky Canga as they prepare for a weekend of New Orleans' queer celebration of identity, Southern Decadence.
In the artificial landscape that is Los Angeles, where even palm trees are imported, nothing epitomizes man's short-sighted efforts to reshape the face of the earth more than the LA River: modified beyond recognition, its flow tapped before it even reached the surface, the river was used, abused and essentially forgotten. But when an unassuming boater insists on seeing it as a river again, a local controversy takes on national dimensions, and the once-derided eyesore turns into a source of hope for the City of Dreams. 'Rock the Boat' is a fun, high-energy and, ultimately, moving film that tells this every-man's adventure and looks at the price nature has to pay for our urban lifestyle.
Fifty people live in a mighty old house on the outskirts of the small town of Brixen in South Tyrol. Thieves, homeless people, unemployed people, addicts, and refugees from all over the world. Their biographies read like a collection of diverse life stories that have only one thing in common: they are all stranded; people who have fallen off the rails and are often considered problematic, sometimes even undesirable, in our society.